Saturday, September 08, 2012

Mitt Romney weighed in for the first time on the Democratic platform initially removing the word "God," saying that was something he would never do.

Romney began a campaign appearance in Virginia Beach, Va. on Saturday by reciting the Pledge of Allegiance before turning to the platform controversy.

"That pledge says "under God," and I will not take God out of our platform," Romney said to cheers. "I will not take God off our coins, and I will not take God out of my heart."

You know what happens now: the guy who claims he doesn't want to talk about anything but the economy is going to campaign on this God business nonstop for the next couple of weeks, until he discovers that, like his lies about welfare and "You didn't build that," it isn't shifting the polls. If it somehow does shift the polls, th entire fall campaign is going to be about that initial omission of "God" from the Democratic platform -- no, really, the entire campaign.

Now, I assumed he'd jump on the God thing. But I wasn't expecting the bit about the coins.

You know what that's a reference to? Something that happened long before Obama was elected.

During the Bush years, dollar coins with images of the presidents began to be minted. As FactCheck.org explained in 2009:

The U.S. Mint pointed out the unusual placement of the inscription when it began promoting the first of the coins in a publicity tour in early 2007. A news release issued Jan. 25, 2007, said: "For the first time since the 1930s, coin inscriptions such as 'E Pluribus Unum' and 'In God We Trust' will be prominently inscribed on the edge of the coins."

So, during the Bush years, certain coins had "In God We Trust" etched into the edges, not on the front or back. That upset some folks. And then it turned out that some coins were iadvertently issued with no "In God We Trust" at all, even on the edges. That also upset certain folks (although the "godless dollars" became collectors' items). Then:

At the end of 2007, [Congress] inserted language in a huge appropriations bill saying that "In God We Trust" must appear on the obverse or the reverse ("heads" or "tails") of future coins.

Remember: all this happened before Barack Obama became president. But as PolitiFact noted in its debunking of this rumor, in response to receiving a chain e-mail,

it appears that the bogus claim has been rekindled since President Barack Obama took office on Jan. 20, 2009.

Yeah, I'll bet.

PolitiFact described the e-mail it received:

The e-mail has the standard ingredients of an Internet falsehood -- sloppy punctuation, an abundance of exclamation points, a plausible story ("I received one from the Post Office as change and I asked for a dollar bill instead"), a request to spread the e-mail far and wide ("Please send to all on your mailing list!!!") and screaming capital letters ("'IN GOD WE TRUST' IS GONE!!!").

This is where Mitt Romney is now getting his talking points.

This also ties into a conniption fit the right had a while back, one that does involve Obama: In 2010, Obama said -- in Indonesia, no less -- that the motto of the United States is "E Pluribus Unum." This led to right-wing outrage, because the official motto of the U.S. (though only since 1956) is "In God We Trust."

(And here I'd like to interrupt: I bet if you went out into a random street anywhere in America and asked a hundred people what the official motto of the U.S. is, giving them those two choices, half of them would get it wrong, and nearly all of them would be guessing. Anyone willing to test this proposition would have my undying gratitude.)

10 comments:

Well, OF COURSE they have to "wedge" what they're going to do to people!

Running in and telling people what they're REALLY going to do, smacking them in the head, bending them over, shoving their dicks in, after throwing in some sand and broken glass in, then ECKIN' 'EM UP THE ASS as hard and fast as they can, and then running over to the next voter to do the same thing until their dick's are a limp as an overcooked noodle, and their ball-sacks are as empty as their head's, might make any future elections, if there ever any, problematic.

For whatever reason, I can't delete this comment to correct it, so, for Jayzoos H. Keerist's FECKIN' SAKE, here's a correction to ONE FECKIN' word in the 2nd paragraph - the word should be 'FECKIN!!!' - "...then FECKIN' 'EM UP THE ASS..."!!!!!

The grandparents who raised this old bastard had a store out in the middle of nowhere that had a sign ore the register that read "In Go we trust, all others pay cash." The Athiest Wobblie grandparents, who though thoroughly (college educated upper) middle class never had a credit card, nor borrowed money.